Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a well-known and valuable method of first aid used to resuscitate people who have suffered from cardiac arrest. CPR requires repetitive chest compressions to squeeze the heart and the thoracic cavity to pump blood through the body. Artificial respiration, such as mouth-to-mouth breathing or a bag mask apparatus, is used to supply air to the lungs. When a first aid provider performs manual chest compression effectively, blood flow in the body is about 25% to 30% of normal blood flow. However, even experienced paramedics cannot maintain adequate chest compressions for more than a few minutes. Hightower, et al., Decay In Quality Of Chest Compressions Over Time, 26 Ann. Emerg. Med. 300 (September 1995). Thus, CPR is not often successful at sustaining or reviving the patient. Nevertheless, if chest compressions could be adequately maintained, then cardiac arrest victims could be sustained for extended periods of time. Occasional reports of extended CPR efforts (45 to 90 minutes) have been reported, with the victims eventually being saved by coronary bypass surgery. See Tovar, et al., Successful Myocardial Revascularization and Neurologic Recovery, 22 Texas Heart J. 271 (1995).
In efforts to provide better blood flow and increase the effectiveness of bystander resuscitation efforts, various mechanical devices have been proposed for performing CPR. In one variation of such devices, a belt is placed around the patient's chest and an automatic chest compression device tightens the belt to effect chest compressions. Our own patents, Mollenauer et al., Resuscitation device having a motor driven belt to constrict/compress the chest, U.S. Pat. No. 6,142,962 (Nov. 7, 2000); Bystrom et al., Resuscitation and alert system, U.S. Pat. No. 6,090,056 (Jul. 18, 2000); Sherman et al., Modular CPR assist device, U.S. Pat. No. 6,066,106 (May 23, 2000); and Sherman et al., Modular CPR assist device, U.S. Pat. No. 6,398,745 (Jun. 4, 2002); and our application Ser. No. 09/866,377 filed on May 25, 2001, our application Ser. No. 10/192,771, filed Jul. 10, 2002 and our application Ser. No. 12/726,262, filed Mar. 17, 2010 show chest compression devices that compress a patient's chest with a belt. Each of these patents or applications is hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties.
Since seconds count during an emergency, any CPR device should be easy to use and facilitate rapid deployment of the device on the patient. Our own devices are easy to deploy quickly and may significantly increase the patient's chances of survival.
One important aspect of such devices is the need for small, powerful yet reliable power supply to power the device. It is not uncommon for CPR to be administered for at least thirty minutes. Thus, the power supply must be capable of delivering sufficient energy to the motor driving the compression device for at least that length of time. Moreover, the power supply must be relatively light weight, so as to enhance portability of the chest compression device, yet it must deliver its power for an extended period of time without significant voltage or current drop off to ensure consistency of compression throughout the treatment period.
Current batteries typically have no way to store data or information related to the overall history of use or performance of the battery. Such data would be useful because it would allow for analysis of the performance of the battery and potentially provide trend information regarding charging and discharging cycles, location of the battery, and the frequency of various problems or faults experienced by the battery.
When such batteries are used in conjunction with devices like mechanical CPR devices that are typically used by first responders such as the fire department or emergency medical technicians, the batteries tend to be exchanged between users. In such a case, a battery assigned to one fire station or ambulance crew may be picked up inadvertently by the crew from another station or ambulance during an emergency. In general, previous batteries have lacked an ability to sense their location and thus it was not possible to track the location of the battery in the event that the battery needed to be upgraded or recalled for maintenance or replacement.
As can be imagined, it is not atypical for batteries to be roughly handled during such emergency situations. Until now, however, the batteries have lacked the ability to sense a parameter associated with rough handling and thus could not make a record of it for future analysis to determine the extent to which rough handling affects the life and performance of the battery.
Even if a battery were capable of sensing and recording the type of events described above, batteries were typically unable to easily communicate the data stored in their memories to computer, server or other processor for analysis. At best, a battery memory, if existent at all, could be queried only when the battery was returned for maintenance or replacement.
What has been needed, and heretofore unavailable, is a light weight, reliable intelligent battery pack having a memory for storing a record of various events that would be useful in analyzing the performance, location and life of the battery. Such a memory would be able to be queried by external systems, such as servers, or other computers and processors either directly from a communication system included in the battery, or through a local or wide area network, intranet or the Internet. Such an accessible memory would allow the location of the battery to be tracked, which would be advantageous in cases where the battery needed to be updated or replaced. The present invention satisfies these, and other needs.